Childhood foods

[L Ross]

Bret's thread drift got me thinking perhaps the topic was worthy of its own thread.
My wife says I am a poor judge of food because I'll eat and enjoy almost anything. A result of being raised in the old days when cash was short and three kids needed to be fed by my stay at home Mom and a Dad that made less than two bucks an hour.
My Mom could make a meal out of most anything. As the oldest of 10 South Dakota kids born during the Great Depression, she had mad skills. She would send me out after barn pigeons and with a casserole dish lined with what she called "English meat pie crust", she turned pigeon and some veggies into a dish fit to serve to company.

 

[Jeff H]

I'm no depression-era kid, but my mom used to make "meat pie" out of barn pigeons my brother and I brought home after our BB-gun safaris. What you're describing sounds VERY much like what she made, crust and all, and I haven't had that in ages.

I'm watching my brother's grandson and have been advised that "all he eats is mac-n-cheese." Well, so far, that's ALL he's eaten! My wife, not yet sixty, can make fabulous meals out of pretty much nothing - some of the best meals she's made came from a little left of this and a little left of that.

 

[fiver]

I had the opposite reaction to monotonous bland meals.
I will still occasionally eat a hot dog but it better not be from the bargain brand on the bulk aisle.
butter and jam are additives to peanut butter and toast toppings not a mixture for a sandwich.

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

As a child from a mom that immigrated from German when she was 7 during WWII my grandma raised us while my mom worked.
My grandmother could walk into a kitchen with a tooth brush and a sack of flour and developed a 4 course meal fit for a king!
One of my favorites growing up was a potaoe roll with a plum in the middle that was boiled, then rolled in bread crumbs, then baked till crispy.
Grandma called them schwetzignattles.
I am for not correct in my spelling but dang they were good

 

[Wasalmonslayer]

Oh am I am an eat anything guy not picky at all but will definately call out good food when graced with it!

 

[popper]

'Any' meat pie. Spaghetti with left over 'whatever' meat and veggies tossed in the pressure cooker. US version of minestrone with meat added. Liver -ugh. Ground round was high on the list. Lots of peanut butter and apple butter on dark bread.

 

[Ian]

Growing up very poor, we ate a lot of beans and cornbread. When I left home I kind of swore off pinto beans, but eventually came back to them now that I know how to remove the oligosaccarides or whatever they're called. Other inexpensive favorites were canned tuna made into cold salad sandwitches and canned mackerel made into patties with cracker crumbs, celery, and eggs. Oh, and we ate lots of eggs from our chickens, chicken meat and domestic rabbit meat that we raised. Oddly, I never got burned out on most of those things and still enjoy them, particularly eggs.

 

[Jeff H]

Growing up very poor, we ate a lot of beans and cornbread. When I left home I kind of swore off pinto beans, but eventually came back to them now that I know how to remove the oligosaccarides or whatever they're called. Other inexpensive favorites were canned tuna made into cold salad sandwitches and canned mackerel made into patties with cracker crumbs, celery, and eggs. Oh, and we ate lots of eggs from our chickens, chicken meat and domestic rabbit meat that we raised. Oddly, I never got burned out on most of those things and still enjoy them, particularly eggs.

OHHH!
Beans and cornbread! Still love that. My grandpa used to smash the beans up in his bowl with a fork before eating the soup with a spoon. When my brother asked why he did that, grandpa said "to squish the farts out." Laughter ensued, of course but was stifled in an instant with a look from grandma that sent a chill and commanded a deathly silence about the table for the rest of that meal. I wonder if oligosaccarides was something he was onto? Poor old Pythagorous didn't care for 'em.

Squirrel, rabbit and lots of fish. I don't remember them ever buying meat and usually carried everything home on "grocery day" in one paper bag. The rest came from raising animals, hunting, fishing and foraging long after he'd "come north" and got a job at the railroad.

"Salmon patties" were a favorite, just like your canned mackerel patties. My wife uses tuna and we have cabbage or cauliflower with a sour white sauce with them. Cheap meal I'd eat once a week.

Eggs - so many things you can do with eggs and they're SO cheap right now that if I didn't actually like my wife's layers, I wouldn't bother with them, but the eggs are 100% better than store-bought and we trade (very loose system of no tabs) surplus what the neighbor has in surplus - sometimes vegetables, honey or a helping hand.

 

[Intheshop]

Oh my goodness.... I think in psycho babble world "they" call them triggers?

A cpl for me are....

When someone starts yapping about $$$.... I think of the Jack we spent on college education for not only my 4 sons but ...gaul dang it,I put wifeypoo through a right hefty bttm line as well....

But how it applies here? My 4 boys grocery bill was matching,his and hers Porsche Carrera's..... that gentleman,is a "trigger".

My mom was the hostess,"fix it lady" at the Mayflower on capital hill for....well,ever. Depression born,full blooded Winston Salem Moravian who knew how to not only cook,but raise a family and provide a loving home..... zero complaints from me. I used to hang out with the chefs at some pretty posh restaurants in DC. No complaints there either.

I'm making a rib eye and blackened scallops for wifey tonight. I can't eat the heavy fats anymore but do love the seafood.

 

[358156 hp]

My mom was a child of the depression. Actually, she grew up on a ranch in northern Nebraska in a sod house without running water or indoor plumbing. Her childhood stories were kind of like reading Elmer Keiths biography. She made sure all of her kids could cook, clean, sew, and work to support themselves. Knowledge and ability were prized accomplishments. I still have people ask me "how do you know these things"? My reply is invariably "why don't you know these things". My kids don't get it. Seriously. My biggest fault as a parent was not making growing up harder for them so they would learn to be more self-reliant. It pains me to say that too, I worked really hard, and sacrificed a lot to take care of them.

 

[Ian]

I still have people ask me "how do you know these things"? My reply is invariably "why don't you know these things"

I get that a lot, too. It saddens me to realize that most people today don't. I'm like "how can you NOT know how to mortise a door hinge or butcher a chicken? Or R&R a P-trap to recover your wife's diamond ear stud?"

 

[smokeywolf]

My father grew up during the 20s and 30s. Just as the depression hit, his mother inherited a large sum of money for that day and age. With no shortage of money and his mother being an exceptional cook of most foods, especially northern Italian dishes, he grew up eating very well.
Although Mom had 5 or 6 dishes she was good at preparing, her favored method of cooking was pouring the contents of a can into a pot or slipping TV dinners into the oven.

I started cooking my own eggs, making my own sandwiches when I was 6 years old. Have always enjoyed cooking and, while I've gone through lean times and eaten ramen for months at a time before kids came along, we have for the most part, eaten well.

 

[JWFilips]

One of my favorite Friday meals ( we never ate meat on Fridays) as a kid; consisted of boiled potatoes and homemade farmers buttermilk!
You floated the potatoes in the bowl of buttermilk and it was good eating as far as I was concerned! My Dad got a gallon oh buttermilk almost every week from the farmers he recapped tires for! We ate a lot of soups in those days..... My Dad never complained. Some of my favorites from my past are Kidney soup and Pluck Soup! Pluck soup was one of my favorites! (I think Pluck was the cows lungs)
But my all time favorie soup was and still is Polish Duck soup Cant really spell it but Phonetic it is "ChawNinYay" Duck soup with the ducks blood and it had Potato noodles (cluski) in it!
Jim

 

[CZ93X62]

Most of my young life revolved around the GREAT native-Mexican food I grew up on in San Bernardino, either from my Mom's kitchen (DANG, can that lady EVER cook) or from the madres, titas, o nineras of my friends and team mates. Marie brought a real good game to our marriage as well, her albondigas is the absolute best-tasting soup on the face of the earth and her chile rellenos rival those of the two best taco shops locally. Her machaca con huevos and chorizo con huevos (breakfast fare) is also the best I have ever had. Most chorizos have a greasy character to them that is a bit off-putting--only two people that I have met can make chorizo con huevos minus the grease while retaining the full flavor of the meat and spices--Marie and the "free cook" at my first jail assignment in Indio.

My uber-favorite Mexican dish on earth, though.......carne asada. "Grilled beef/steak" in Spanish, all sorts of pretenders and posers like to call their grilled steak "carne asada". Quiete, babosos!

True carne asada is made from skirt steak or flank steak, and cut at an angle to the 'grain' of the meat to reduce its toughness. Remove the fat and waste/gristle. This was not a meal of the upper class Spanish and Mexican stock growers of the pre-American period in the Southwest and California. This was a meal for the workers on the ranchos of the 1700s and 1800s. Angle-cut and thinly-sliced, the meat was soaked in a marinade of tomatillo, cilantro, a little sage, salt, black pepper, and other spices that were locally available from native/Indian traders. The meat should stay in the marinade for at least 8 hours in a cool/not cold environment, and 24-36 hours is better.

With meat readied, start your fire with decent charcoal (Kingsford is my favorite). Gas grills are for gavachos y hueros. Include some mesquite, sage, or manzanita branches to the fire once the coals are going well and just before putting the meat on the grill. Renew these fuel amendments after each evolution of meat is finished. The thin steaks don't take long to fully cook, maybe 30-60 seconds per side. Right after putting the steak on the grill, pour a little of the marinade atop the meat, and on the reverse side when it is turned over. Be careful not to over-cook. If the marinade is made right, your eyes will be a little irritated from the burned spices while you are grilling.

There will be NO LEFTOVERS. Marinade recipes vary, and they can be as closely-guarded a secret as barbecue sauce and rub recipes. SO DARN GOOD!

 

[Bret4207]

Buttermilk, still amazes me people pay $$$ for it. It's basically a waste product, or at least the real stuff is. I always hated it but was forced for some reason to drink some every now and again. But soups, yeah, lots of soups! I swear most were leftovers, I don't recall many made on purpose soups. One guy I used to work with doing firewood would tie right into the liverwurst and mustard sandwiches but when the soup was put on the table he'd actually get up, take his sandwich and leave. I finally asked him why and he said as a kid and teen all they ever had to eat was watery tomato soup with macaroni in it...sometimes. He was from out near Buffalo and said he went to school just to get fed! He said the sight of soup made him nauseous to that day.

I have to say I was pretty lucky growing up in a restaurant. As I said in the other thread, we ate all the stuff "not fit to serve the paying customers". We always had plenty to eat but it was pretty darn plain. My grandmother could make the best pie in the world but I think her ideas of spices ended at salt and pepper. Garlic was reserved strictly for roasting beef. Oregano went on pizza- period. We had the only pizza in a 15 or 20 mile radius. It was horrible pizza compared to even a decent frozen pie today, but it was pretty freakin' exotic for 1968! Salmon patties, hash, fish balls, fritters, a lot of really not very good pot roasts and plain baked chicken with nothing more than some salt and pepper on it. Oh, and lots pf boiled and baked potatoes and waht I thought at the time were good mashed spuds...until I met my wife! Anyway, once I started dateing the future Mrs Bret, I found out that things like spaghetti could actually be really tasty and not just noodles with a bland red sauce on it. And my future mother in laws home made pizza was very good, entirely different from what I was used to. OTOH, she made a lot of veggies that to this day make me gag. She ad my FIL loved zucchini fried up in grease. Just throw mine in the trash and save me the trouble of puking it up! But she could turn out stuff that was absolutely delicious and it was always the cheapest stuff they could find. I don't know how she did it.

The one place my childhood food memories shine is in hamburgers and roast beef. Our restaurants specialty was roast beef and my grandfather was one beef roasting son of a gun! To this day I've never had better than what he cooked. And the hamburger we got was all fresh, locally ground round. I don't know what else they did to it but it was simply the best hamburger I've ever eaten.

I won't go into my grandmothers dessert selection because people have been known to gain 20 lbs just reading about them! That woman could BAKE!!!

 

[358156 hp]

We have a local Mexican Restaurant that serves up a great Carne Asada Burrito. It's a real Mexican Restaurant too, the English language often takes a beating with the waiters. I usually order it when I'm in full carnivore mood. I can buy a Carne Asada Burrito with beans & rice for less than I can buy a cheap steak at the store to cook at home. I swear these burritos have over a half lb of steak in them. The meat is cut the way Al described it, small, thin pieces, cut at an angle.

 

[462]

A carne asada burrito is my favorite, and after that pink chicken one of several weeks ago, it's the only kind I'll order henceforth.

 

[462]

My wife's mother worked in a world famous sardine cannery, and had access to the squid that was also processed nearby, so her family ate a lot of squid. Her father worked in the local fort's quartermaster's office, consequently misplaced(?) filet mignon was another often served meal. I never had a filet till after marrying my wife, nor squid. Deep fried squid sandwiches on a fresh-baked roll are a Friday lunch favorite of ours.

My lunches were either peanut butter and jelly (they are still yummy), or liverwurst (yukko!). For dinner, it was mostly backed chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, meat loaf, mashed potatoes and gravy, or pot roast, mashed potatoes and gravy. It wasn't that Mom wasn't a good cook, she was a GREAT cook, it's just that the budget couldn't afford much else. She was a top-notch baker, too.

 

[freebullet]

I would not have survived some of those descriptors... meat & taters for me..or fish & taters.

 

[Ian]

I've always been pretty neutral on taters, pasta, and bread. Meat, cheese, and non-starchy veggies are my preference.